Modern Medicine and the Scandal of Suffering Lester Liao, MD, MTS, Pediatric Resident, University of Alberta, Resident Lead of the Arts and Humanities in Health and Medicine Program and Resident Affiliate of the John Dossetor Health Ethics Centre; Kianna Owen, BScN, RN, Grey Nuns Hospital; and Dax G. Rumsey, MD, MSc, FRCPC, Assistant Professor and Pediatric Rheumatologist, University of Alberta and Stollery Children's Hospital

The culture of medicine and society at large in the contemporary West is struggling to address the question of human suffering. As Neil Postman powerfully argued, technology has drastically altered our ability to engage weighty questions in a sustained and thoughtful manner. The increasing specialization of medicine and its emphasis on technical mastery further transform the dying process into medical experiences focused on biochemical phenomena. Suffering and death are increasingly rationalized as detached concepts rather than embodied experiences that all humans encounter. From Facebook News feeds to consumerist culture and the latest gadget, the problem of meaning in suffering is increasingly drowned in a sea of irrelevance.

In addition to these contemporary challenges, the West espouses a secular cultural vision that is reductionistic in its understanding of human suffering. The cultural anthropologist Richard Shweder has noted that while suffering in Eastern traditions can have a wider moral or interpersonal ontology, it is generally understood in biomedical terms in the West. As a chemical phenomenon, suffering is outside the domain of good and evil and understood as a “chaotic interruption.” Furthermore, if medical mastery is the summum bonum of the profession, suffering becomes a scandal because it is uncontrollable. The ideological resources of the secular West lead to a vision of suffering as a meaningless affront to doctors and patients.

Restricted to what Charles Taylor calls the immanent frame, the meaning of suffering is necessarily limited to the here and now. Existentialism has risen as a dissatisfied response to the sterility of the Enlightenment’s scientific rationalism but retains this fundamental limitation. Without transcendence, the dominant narrative of Western life is that life consists of finding happiness and developing the conditions that are most conducive to this goal. Suffering, however, removes the conditions for happiness, and so destroys reasons to continue living. If well-being and happiness are the deepest goals of life, suffering crushes them, and with no greater vision for purpose and meaning in life, despair settles in.

In contrast to the contemporary West, numerous other cultures and religions have situated meaning beyond the present. This transforms the meaning of suffering, as it can serve as a vehicle to produce something greater than the happiness it destroys. Its ontology is further understood as possibly engaging moral and interpersonal realities, which means sufferers are not solely victims of chance. ​Of all religions, Christianity provides a uniquely nuanced understanding of suffering. Suffering is a part of a fallen world and hence it cannot be ignored or embraced as good. It is often unfair and not illusory, so people can and should lament it. Yet, despite this, suffering does not have to lead to despair. God has willingly taken on suffering Himself through Jesus dying on a cross to save humanity. He identifies with people’s pain and deepens faith in suffering. The grace and love of God lead finally to hope. As C.S. Lewis said, God will redeem all suffering in the future and “work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory.”